Paul Mulshine has attacked me for supporting state funding for Abbott school districts. What he hasn't told readers is that I support full state funding for all districts.
Under my property tax reform proposals, Abbott districts would have the same percentage of their costs covered by the state as they do today, while non-Abbott districts would have a higher percentage covered each year until they catch up to the Abbott level. From that point, state funding for both sets of districts would increase equally until all districts are largely funded by the state.
Where would the state get the money to accomplish this? Not from raising state taxes but from normal economic growth. Year-to- year economic growth causes state government to take in about a billion-and-a-half dollars more each year than it took in the year before. Even if we lower state tax rates, annual tax receipts will rise by more than $15 billion in 2015.
My property tax reforms will place reasonable spending limits on school districts and local governments, then force the state to use its constantly rising revenues to cover a constantly rising percentage of school and local costs. This combination of controlled local spending and increased state funding would cause school, municipal and county property taxes to decline by about 20 percent in the next three years and by about 60 percent in the next 10.
That's not good enough for Mulshine. He wants Republican candidates for governor to slash state funding for urban school districts so the savings can be redistributed to suburban districts immediately. I don't believe any governor could get the political support necessary to do this.
But polls reveal that voters do support my property tax reforms. By 86 percent to 5 percent, voters support slowing the growth of state government and having more of their tax money sent to schools and communities to lower property taxes. That is what my reforms would accomplish.
If Republicans fight to pass my reforms and Democrats fight to block them, Republicans will win landslide victories up and down the ticket, giving them the mandate necessary to implement my reforms.
I do not support judges legislating from the bench and I do not support the formulas implemented by the Abbott decisions. But I do support dramatically and permanently reducing the use of property taxes to fund public schools and basic local services -- and I do believe that to implement such reforms, we must craft them in a way that attracts broad public support.
